


Anniversary

by Likimeya



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-01
Updated: 2010-10-01
Packaged: 2017-10-12 08:22:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/122871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Likimeya/pseuds/Likimeya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A year after the inception, an email from Cobb causes Saito to muse over the past and the present.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anniversary

Saito checked his office email inbox again at 11 pm, despite his promise to his companion on the sofa opposite him (a person who should have been distraction enough, really) that he would not keep doing so. It got him an half-exasperated, half-mocking _hmph_ , before his offended vis-à-vis grabbed a handful of Saito's evening newspapers and flopped back to lie stretched out on the sofa and read them.

Saito scrolled down through his inbox hurriedly, skimming through the subject lines, checking more out of habit than from real interest, anyway. But then, four e-mails up from the bottom, one particular subject line caught his attention. "Happy Anniversary!" it read. Saito's heart almost stopped in his chest before he saw the name: D. Cobb, and realized what anniversary it was that he had forgotten. It was indeed a year to the day that he had last seen this temporary business partner of his, in the arrivals gate at the airport, handing a forged passport to an officer with trepidation.

Saito's eyes flickered up on their own accord to unnecessarily check if his companion was still lying on the sofa. The obvious failed attempt at furtiveness would have betrayed him to be secretive about something if the other were not absorbed in the gazette he was reading. Saito looked hastily down again and opened the message.

"I have kept track", Cobb wrote. After that there were inserted two photographs of Robert Fischer doing business, cropped out of e-papers; pictures taken at very different times during this last year, one ten months ago, the other barely three; pictures from articles that announced the news and the progress of Robert's breaking up of his business and selling it share by share.

Below the pictures Cobb had written,   
"I hope that you, too, find that it was all worth it."

 _"It"_? That had to be the most blatant euphemism Saito had read in quite a while – a lifetime, or _two_ lifetimes rather. Although what exactly "it" was code for, Saito could not easily put into words himself. What had it been, this non-stop flight that lasted an age? This unexpected and unfortunate descent of his into what was the last truly unmapped territory in the world? A respite at first, turning into a nightmare after the first couple of hours, when recollections of snippets of conversations came back to him; Ariadne asking what limbo was, Cobb not wanting him to die. Horror, as realization sank it; as he understood that he would have a lifetime to worry and beat himself up about the small regrets he had taken into sleep with him, before he could put right all the little wrongs, say the things he had left unsaid, make up for things he _had_ said. An eternity of remorse? If there was a hell…

Horror turning to habit, as was the way with long-term nightmares; resignation next… fog – desert of the mind - frost - numbness.

Forgetfulness.

Finally, Nothing.

Sighing winds ghosting over the rocks on the coast of a seascape that reminded him of nothing at all, whispering in a tongue he did not understand, trying to make him recall a hidden truth he could not put his finger on, one he had understood only afterwards: that there was another place besides this one that he had once known; beyond – behind, above? – the sundering primordial waters.

But he had banished into the depths of the unconscious the ability to formulate such thoughts, after years and years of yearning and wishful thinking and trying to reach out. He had made the empty mists his home and the ice-cold indifference his snug blanket of protection against recollections of warmer feelings, then seeming so irretrievably lost beyond hope of re-experience.   
If he made himself not remember how the rain had felt on his face, he could not miss it. If he forgot that the people around him were not real, he could no longer yearn until his heart broke for real talk and touches. So he had; and had settled and welcomed in the numbing cold and been content to care for the dead gardens behind the empty house in which he – almost – lived.

But no, he should not go there! Literally pulling himself upright, Saito tore his thoughts away from the grey places, where they were still prone to linger now and again, and concentrated instead on the two pictures Cobb had sent.

The first one, the one of Robert taking the first step in breaking up his empire, was taken a good two months after the inception. Robert was shaking the hand of Lars Bengtson, head of Bengtson Industries, a minor former rival. He was wearing his best suit, the pinstriped purple one, and had been given a _Financial Times_ to hold tucked under his left arm like stage prop. The set, hard line of his jaw betrayed to the knowing observer that he was feeling as tense and stiff as his freshly ironed clothes. Insecurity, the novelty of dealing with big choices and transactions all by himself; wondering if he was doing the right thing after all, whether he wasn't jeopardizing his future and betraying the memory of his father, who was barely cold in his grave.

The second picture, though similar in composition, could not have been more different. It showed Robert selling the last and greatest share of what had once been Fischer Morrow, celebrating the end an era, and smiling while doing so – no, laughing cheerfully, in fact. Saito wondered what on earth he could have said that was so witty as to elicit such light-hearted mirth. For the buyer whose hand Robert was shaking was none other than him. It ended how it started: with him. Still, fortunately, the same old, tough James-Bond style businessman, after all of "it".   
Unlike Robert, as was evidenced by his wardrobe choice. In freshly acquired and charming contempt of protocol, Robert had done away with suit and ironed shirt and was wearing a simple white t-shirt under a black sweater, much to the consternation of those around him. His outfit set him apart from all his peers, stating that at least for the moment, he was done with all of that – that world, that other life. He seemed more comfortable than he had ever been in his dashing tailored suit. And at the same time, Saito thought, he looked more glamorous than ever before, engagingly so. It was the smile that made all the difference.

The sweater itself however, Saito thought, looked its best when lying discarded on his apartment's tiled floor, as it had been that very night, that first night. The night he forgot the taste of sterilizing sea salt in his mouth.

 

"I hope you find that it was worth it", Cobb wrote.

Saito raised his head and looked thoughtfully at what remained in the end, after his saving the world and the gradual revolution of several whole business sectors; the one thing that, after an eternity and… all the rest of " _it_ ", felt really novel to him; the one change this strange and familiar afterlife of his had brought with it that seemed like it truly mattered: the person lounging, unselfconsciously elegant, on the sofa opposite him, skimming through insolvency announcements with pursed lips and raised eyebrows, drumming fingers against his jeans-clad thighs. Robert felt his gaze and looked back him, cold eyes sparkling warmly. Reading the seriousness in his face, he gave him one of his bright smiles, private like a caress. As always, Saito was surprised by how easily he was able to answer it wholeheartedly. Smiling was a skill he had had a hard time relearning, until recently.

Yes, Saito thought, shut down his iBoard and got up to move to the other sofa. Every bleak, empty, long lonely second of "it" had been worth it.


End file.
